Radio frequency (RF) transmitters, such as used in cellular telephones, develop an RF signal to be transmitted through the air. Information is carried on the signal via some form of modulation such as frequency modulation, phase modulation, amplitude modulation, or a combination of these.
It may be desirable to create a modulated signal with both amplitude and phase modulation. With the necessity of developing small and lightweight devices, particularly cellular telephones, it is important that such amplifier circuits use a minimum of components. One way to satisfy this desire is to directly modulate an oscillator phase lock loop (PLL) to impart the phase modulation component directly on the signal and then to amplitude modulate the power amplifier stage connected to a voltage controlled oscillator/phase lock loop (VCO/PLL) combination with the amplitude component. VCO/PLL circuits exist that have sufficient bandwidth relative to the information bandwidth of the signal to cause the phase modulation to occur directly on the output signal without any up-conversion. It remains, however, to put an amplitude signal onto this phase modulated signal. This is preferably done in the power amplifier stage, as it will permit this stage to run at high efficiency in a non-linear mode. The amplitude information could be imparted via modulating the power amplifier supply voltage, much as was done with amplitude modulated transmitters previously. However, a difficulty arises in that the transfer function between power amplifier supply voltage and signal amplitude output may not be linear.
Previously, the above problems have been solved by various alternative modulation methods. One is the use of quadrature or I/Q modulation of the RF signal directly. This requires a linear power amplifier. Also, a linear RF power amplifier has used an amplitude feedback loop to make the RF output track the amplitude of the RF input signal. However, a linear power amplifier is not as efficient as a non-linear power amplifier. Also, either a linear or a non-linear power amplifier with an amplitude feedback loop has an inherent limit on the loop filtering that may restrict the amount of noise that can be suppressed from the varying voltage supply.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems discussed above in a novel and simple manner.